Artists

Mary Brewster Hazelton

American, 1868-1953

Mary Brewster Hazelton was a distinguished portrait painter in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. She was especially known for her portraits of sensitive seeming young women, often costumed in somewhat exotic gowns or shawls. An examples is her painting, The Letter, 1914, 38 x 32, which depicts a lovely-appearing young woman seated at a table, wearing a green dress with a fur-edged cream swathe of fabric encircling her body like a royal robe.

Born in 1868 in Milton, Massachusetts, Hazelton studied with Edmund C. Tarbell, the famous painter and teacher, at the Museum School of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, where Hazelton herself would later teach intermittently between 1892 to 1906. At the School, Hazelton was among a group called "Tarbellites", meaning they were favorite students of Tarbell. From 1900 to 1903, she studied in Europe, and from 1906 to 1940, she maintained her work place in Fenway Studios in Boston.

Hazelton held memberships in the Connecticut Academy of Fine Arts, and in three Massachusetts institutions, the Guild of Boston Artists, the Copley Society and Concord Art Association.

Hazelton won many honors and awards including in 1896 the distinction of being the first woman to win the Hallgarten Prize from the National Academy of Design; the Paige Traveling Scholarship from the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, 1899; Honorable Mention, 1901, Pan-American Exposition, Buffalo, New York; and inclusion in the 1915 Pan-Pacific Exposition, San Francisco where she won a medal. She exhibited in fifteen annual exhibitions of the Pennsylvania Academy, and in 1917 with the Society of Independent Artists.

Hazelton decorated the chancel of the Wellesley Hills Congregational Church in Massachusetts. Her 1924 portrait of William Stoughton, Acting Royal Governor of Massachusetts during 1694-1699, 1700-1701, is in the Massachusetts State House.

Mary Brewster Hazelton died in 1953 in Wellesley, Massachusetts.

Source:
Jules and Nancy Heller, North American Women Artists of the 20th Century
Paul Sternberg, Sr., American Women Artists